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Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

nature.com

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Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#21

Post by ltbarcly3 »

beebmam wrote: post #15
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #3

Edit: before you downvote this, read it? I'm not an anti-vax nutcase. They didn't trust the public with their actual thinking at any point during Covid. The guidance was initially "don't wear a mask, it will make it worse because you'll infect yourself with your hand" to "we'll just lock down for 3 weeks and then back to normal" to "we have to flatten the curve to avoid overwhelming hospitals" to the current policy o…

Surgical masks (and other cloth masks) make a small but significant difference in transmission. At the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't understand whether that difference was lost in the increased need to interact with one's face while wearing a mask (and we now know that SARS-CoV-2 becomes inactivated quite quickly on surfaces, like our hands). N95s and higher rated masks/filters have always been very good for v…

This is obviously false, they did know that it was better to wear a mask. Most of the population of the world was already wearing masks or being told to do so if possible. Doctors and other health professionals wear masks.

National policy should not be made on the basis of 'some people kindof have this pet theory that you might infect yourself if you touch your ear'. I don't know of a single study that says you increase your chance of respiratory virus transmission from touching the sides and back of your head.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#22

Post by mechanical_bear »

MikeTaylor wrote: post #6

SIDE-ISSUE ALERT! The article ends with the statement "The author declares no competing interests". I think this is very poor phrasing, as it's ambiguous: does it mean "The author has not declared any competing interests", or "The author has positively declared that there are no competing interests"? (To be clear, I am not for a moment suggesting any hidden interests on the part of the author, and I think his point i…

This is some bike shedding of the top tier variety.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#23

Post by bedhead »

Hard truths and politics aren't compatible because there's too much incentive misalignment. People in power have no reason to tell the truth because it'll get them fired, and the reason for that is most people don't even want the truth anyhow, it triggers some form of pain. The path of least resistance inevitably seems to be lying in some form.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#24

Post by hammock »

outime wrote: post #13
colordrops wrote: post #10

The article is discussing the media and government being intentionally vague or even misinformative because they don't trust the public, but it backfires and causes more distrust. The flip side that wasn't discussed is the belittling and censoring of voices that were skeptical of the narratives, which engendered even more distrust. Their strategy of information control backfired, and they doubled down. Now we've got…

What’s more interesting is that most of these people will survive this episode (given the known mortality data) and thus will “win” the debate (from their point of view) and will never ever trust the government (or health authorities) again. That’s the biggest downside in reality, and regaining the trust is going to be extremely complicated.

>That’s the biggest downside

Downside for whom?

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#26

Post by wonderwonder »

The author is completely right in that the government at least in the US attempting to downplay, mislead or 'avoid panic' absolutely destroyed any credibility and is still suffering from it. Most people are not stupid, if provided with all available information as well as clear statements regarding the reliability of that information and just a clear message saying "hey this is new and we have no idea, we are making our best guess" people will make decent choices. Unfortunately the US decided to torpedo its credibility, and all sides decided to turn it into a political issue which a pandemic should very much not be. All politics all the time and the US is now crippling itself. In the absence of real honest leadership people turned to the loudest voices of the media. Once the people distrust the government and think they are lying its very hard to appeal to their logic again. I am very much not a fan of Bush II but he did it right after 9/11. What he did after though is a topic for another day.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#27

Post by beebmam »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #21
beebmam wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surgical masks (and other cloth masks) make a small but significant difference in transmission. At the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't understand whether that difference was lost in the increased need to interact with one's face while wearing a mask (and we now know that SARS-CoV-2 becomes inactivated quite quickly on surfaces, like our hands). N95s and higher rated masks/filters have always been very good for v…

This is obviously false, they did know that it was better to wear a mask. Most of the population of the world was already wearing masks or being told to do so if possible. Doctors and other health professionals wear masks. National policy should not be made on the basis of 'some people kindof have this pet theory that you might infect yourself if you touch your ear'. I don't know of a single study that says you incre…

It really wasn't false at the time; there's a bunch of uncertainty around it for this virus. For quite a long time, people really did believe SARS-CoV-2 could transmit through surfaces easily. We now know that to be incorrect.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#28

Post by sto_hristo »

outime wrote: post #13
colordrops wrote: post #10

The article is discussing the media and government being intentionally vague or even misinformative because they don't trust the public, but it backfires and causes more distrust. The flip side that wasn't discussed is the belittling and censoring of voices that were skeptical of the narratives, which engendered even more distrust. Their strategy of information control backfired, and they doubled down. Now we've got…

What’s more interesting is that most of these people will survive this episode (given the known mortality data) and thus will “win” the debate (from their point of view) and will never ever trust the government (or health authorities) again. That’s the biggest downside in reality, and regaining the trust is going to be extremely complicated.

Such pandemics don't start every other year. Last great one was 100 years ago. So i wouldn't worry at all for the "winners", there's plenty of time for generations to refresh.

Worry about government's inability to learn and improve based on past mistakes, also complacency. It's not hard to imagine 100 years from now, popular presidential guy spearheading the next great pandemic, calming the subjects down with the great medical advancements they had since today and how well prepared they are. Until nature, as it always does, disregards everything and does its own thing unchallenged.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#29

Post by rob_c »

jerf wrote: post #14
rob_c wrote: post #4

Thanks for posting. It's a terrible shame society has torn itself apart before we could learn the (to some) obvious lesson, but at least maybe this will inform policy in the future... That or governments are now more terrified of people losing their minds and so feel they should be even more controlling in their fear response as a knee jerk reaction.... Either way, in the UK we failed to save about 67% of those who c…

There's two aspects to this, I think. One is true protectionism. My objection to this is that if we perhaps had superhumans guiding us mere humans, they might be capable of modulating our information flow to protect us, but mere humans lack this power. Indeed, let's be honest, being a politician is if anything a counter -indicator in being the sort of person capable of dealing with the real issues that arise in a cri…

Broadly after seeing some of the material coming out of the UK "think tanks" in early 2020 this was really "govt, starched collar, upper class" thinking that the proles will start eating themselves if we even mention that there's a chance they could die.

I think projected compliance with a lockdown in the UK was initially estimated and serious attempts were made to model it at 40% compliance. When govt got near 95%+ compliance during the first lock down other idiots took over behind the scenes, patted themselves on the back and decided why not go for "zero-covid" in 2020...

Edit: (I'm not joking there is a statement on record from politicians reacting to the suggestion with "this is not Asia, people would not stand for a lockdown", aka we expect that as policy to not be able to function)

AKA the first lockdown being a success in the UK was a great statement of how the people behave that had damming effect on the direction of health policy.

Heard immunity would have been reached much quicker and the 2020 winter less bad had more healthy people been exposed in the start and summer of 2020. The fact that lockdown and rules were followed so well actually made the winter worse than the initial (sensible) projections predicted.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#30

Post by rob_c »

nicoburns wrote: post #17
rob_c wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not knowing where you're from sounds like you're commenting on the UK policy at least (I'm sure it parallels others)... Speaking from an unfortunate position of experience a lot of this is driven (in the UK) by whitehall asking deliberately leading questions which are politically charged of civil servants and scientists. aka, there is a difference between, "what do we have to do to reduce deaths due to X this summer"…

> Not knowing where you're from sounds like you're commenting on the UK policy at least Parent comment does mention they're from the US.

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